Todd Sucherman Drum Set Masterclass

Text and Transcription by Brad Schlueter

March 15, 2012 7:07 am

DRUM!: I meant it more generally, but
you’re right. Technically, the Moeller stroke is that old-school
marching technique that involves a lot of arm motion. Lift the elbow,
flip the wrist back, etc. What you do is probably more of a reduced
Moeller, or a velocity stroke. How do you think of it?T.S.: Well, I think it’s a bastardized
Moeller, in a way. I first became aware of that when I got to hang out
with Steve Smith in ’91 or ’92. We sat with a snare drum in
between us for a good half hour. That was where I became familiar with
the down-tap-up repeated triplet figure and that hand motion, and then
maybe a year or two later I took a lesson with Jim Chapin and he had a
slightly different slant on that. So I think it was an amalgamation
between my two experiences with Steve and Jim that formed what I do.

I wouldn’t say that it’s the classic Moeller but
it’s just something that works for me to play what I want to play.
That’s the idea. You want to get your technique to the point where
you can play what you hear and ultimately the technique is a means to an
end. It’s kind of like speaking. You think of what you want to
say; you’re thinking of words not diagramming sentences in your
head. You get the technique to a point that you don’t have to
think about it you just call upon it and some things end up feeling
very, very natural and seep into your playing and become part of who you
are.

DRUM!: You use a couple of hand-pattern
ostinatos in your playing and throughout the Methods And Mechanics DVD
with various bass drum patterns that work for backbeat-type grooves. The
song “Together” uses one of them. (Fig. 1) They really seem
to propel your grooves a lot. How’d you develop that?

T.S.: Any system that you can work with ostinatos or
bass drum patterns in Western backbeat music is useful because
you’re just familiarizing yourself with all the possibilities in
common time and common note rates, and that can only be a good thing.
You can call upon ideas and sort of paint as you go along if you have
developed the ability to do that, and have gone through different
permutations until these things sound and feel normal. But that only
comes with sitting there and doing it.

The Gary Chaffee Fatback exercises* – going through all those
different ostinatos with the 200 possible bass drum combinations that
you can play in 4/4 music. There it is. There’s everything in 4/4
time with a backbeat on 2 and 4. There are all your possibilities, at
least within a quarter- to sixteenth-note rate. So any kind of
consistent work through a system like that can only yield beneficial
results.